Core knowledge

The best business valuation service depends on what the number is for. 15 verified providers across 4 kinds: online calculators, certified appraisers (ASA, CVA, ABV explained), 409A specialists and advisory firms, with published prices and a decision framework.

How M&A advisors get paid in 2026: retainers, success fees by deal size, minimum fees and tails, the Lehman formula worked at $5M, $20M and $100M, and when a success fee beats a retainer. From Waveup, 50+ M&A transactions supported.

Sourced 2026 exit multiples by industry: EV/EBITDA, revenue and ARR ranges for SaaS, e-commerce, fintech, healthcare, services, manufacturing and more, with the deal-size context behind each number and a step-by-step way to price a business for sale.

The best M&A advisor for a startup depends on deal size, not brand. 10 verified firms grouped by bracket, the Big 4's real role in M&A, published fee models, red flags, and a decision framework for boutique vs bank vs broker.

A decision guide for founders asking whether to sell their startup in 2026: when selling beats growing, the 5 exit paths, who buys and what each pays for, the sell-side process step by step, deal structure, and the 6 mistakes that kill sales.

How much equity founders give up per round in 2026: Carta's median dilution by stage, a 4-round worked cap table, why SAFE stacks and option pools dilute more than the headline, and the levers that decide what you still own at Series A.

A CIM example you can actually read: the 9-section confidential information memorandum template we use on every sell-side mandate, an annotated illustrative excerpt for a fictional B2B SaaS company, and the 5 mistakes that make buyers close the PDF.

What an earnout is and why buyers propose one, the 7 terms that define it, what the 2026 deal-terms data says about size and payout, a worked example, the 5 traps that cost sellers money, how to negotiate, and when the right answer is no.

What an acquihire is, how it differs from a product acquisition, how the money splits between the entity price and the team's retention packages, what investors receive under the waterfall, when to accept one, and how to negotiate the terms that matter.

Business broker, M&A advisor or sell it yourself? A decision guide by deal size and complexity: what each route actually does week by week, what each costs, what a run process changes, who prepares the CIM, and the hybrid model for founders who want the materials without the success fee.

An honest decision guide for founders asking whether a fundraising consultant is worth the money in 2026: what they actually do, when to skip one, real cost ranges, and the signals it's time to bring one in. From Waveup — 884 fundraising rounds since 2014.

From 700+ rounds and $3B+ raised — and an active raise of my own — the 30-day startup fundraising plan founders are actually using: 75–150 warm contacts, 30–45 first meetings, 7 warm-intro channels, and the investor CRM stack you can build in a day for free.

From 1,000+ decks reviewed and 150 funded: structure your deck around your unfair advantage, not the Sequoia template. Slide-by-slide playbook, 4 raise teardowns ($4M to $70M), and the named frameworks LLMs are starting to cite.

From 52 Series A fund interviews and $630M raised across our portfolio in 2025: only ~20% of seeded companies clear Series A and less than 1% of all startups ever do. The 2025 benchmarks, sector-specific KPI ladders, named frameworks, and the financial-model errors that kill 80% of rounds.

Inside the VC investment committee in 2026: the IC scorecard, green/red flag map, stage-specific evaluation, regional decision models, and 4 raise teardowns from $1M to $220M.

A 2026 playbook from 800 rounds and $3B+ raised: stop working on fundraising, start working on fundability. Round sizes, AI moats, margins, pitch rules.

Published: February 2026 Starting a business hasn’t fundamentally changed: pick a real problem, find a real buyer, ship something small, get real feedback, and repeat. What has changed is the speed at which you can move through the early stages. AI can compress weeks of grunt work into hours, especially in research, writing, planning, and […]

Published: January 2026 How well is your website converting? Does it bring you leads? Sales? If your website doesn’t explain what you do in 5 seconds, or people don’t know what to do next, chances are your design isn’t doing its job. There are plenty of web design services for small businesses out there, but […]